iPad Set for 'Free Run' Through Holiday Tablet Shopping Season

Gartner's projections of worldwide tablet sales to end users (thousands of units)

Research firm Gartner today released updated sales estimates for the tablet market, noting that a lack of momentum from competing products will give Apple's iPad "free run" through the lucrative holiday shopping period. Looking out over the longer term, Gartner sees Apple maintaining a majority share of the tablet market through 2014 even as Microsoft's Windows 8 and Research in Motion's QNX platforms are expected to gain some traction.

“We expect Apple to maintain a market share lead throughout our forecast period by commanding more than 50 percent of the market until 2014,” Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “This is because Apple delivers a superior and unified user experience across its hardware, software and services. Unless competitors can respond with a similar approach, challenges to Apple’s position will be minimal. Apple had the foresight to create this market and in doing that planned for it as far as component supplies such as memory and screen. This allowed Apple to bring the iPad out at a very competitive price and no compromise in experience among the different models that offer storage and connectivity options.”

Gartner has pared back its estimates for Android tablet sales in 2011 by 28% over last quarter's projections, identifying extremely weak adoption due to high prices, user interface issues, and limited app offerings. Only some success in low-cost Asian markets and strong expectations for Amazon's forthcoming tablet kept Gartner from slashing projected Android device sales even further.

Android is expected to see stronger growth heading into next year as Google pushes out its next-generation "Ice Cream Sandwich" release of Android and works to address fragmentation throughout the Android ecosystem. Gartner's sales projections do not, however, see Android tablets catching up to the iPad by the end of the forecast period of 2015.

Top Rated Comments

Why? The iPad 2 was released months ago and the iPad 3 won't be out for several more months. The iPhone being released in July would have had those statements just as true as it will by being released in October.

The iPhone and iPad markets are different. One should not affect the other.

Amazon's tab, from what I've read, isn't going to be a head-to-head iPad competitor. It looks to be more of a tablet for those who like the tab concept but not ready, willing to spend $500+. People who have an iPad on their "wish list" are not going to be satisfied with the color Kindle. It's likely to take more sales away from the color Nook than the iPad.

they just slashed their android tablet forcasts for this year by %30, and yet they feel comfortable projecting windows tablet sales in 2015 to be 34,435, no more, no less. and this is before windows tablets were even introduced to the market, actually before even microsoft has a proper idea of their eventual features, price, performace, etc (it's not clear even if and how those tablets will run office apps, which is basically the sole reason to get a microsoft tabthing)..

... Shipments of iPads is a good estimation of iPad sales. Shipments of Android tablets is a lousy estimation of Android tablet sales. Yet the press keeps using shipments as a metric of market share, which is laughably wrong...

I agree. When Apple ships 10M units, they sell about 10M units.
Other manufacturers make & ship 1M units, and end up selling say, 20k units.

Then, what happens is the the remaining 980k units eventually get sold on liquidation.

So the when you read reports of manufactures selling 1M tablets, often 50%+ of them are at a heavy discount or loss.

I'm sorry, but I feel apple has shot them selves in the foot. With the iPhone release being so late I can see this eating into iPad sales.

I don't see how. The iPhone is "delayed" a mere approx 3 months from the historical launch period and when it is launched it will overlap with the usual iPod launch, not the iPad. If anything this would hurt iPod touch sales but the touch is a fairly mature product at this point and people typically have either have a touch or and iPhone, not both, so probably nill effect on Apple's bottom line.

Also, historically, there has only been 2-3 months separation between the iPhone and iPad model launches. With an Oct iPhone launch the spread is wider, not narrower.

If Apple launched the iPad next to the iPhone I'd agree, but not the case here. iPhone buyers have banked their purchase for some time now.

Go SAMSUNG! One must admit that the growth of Android-based tablets is amazing.

This numbers are just pure BS , there will not be 11 million Android tablets delivered to consumers in 2011. Maybe if 8 or 9 million are sold this quarter. What is going to drive that massive increase?

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